Three weeks ago Orioles right-hander Miguel Gonzalez dominated the Yankees, allowing one run in seven innings and striking out a career-high ten. He did it mostly with his splitter-changeup hybrid, getting 17 swings and misses, the second highest total of his career. The Yankees had no chance against his split-change that night — Gonzalez threw 27 of them, the Yankees swung at 20, and missed ten times. Yikes.
Tonight’s challenge will be to hit that splitter-changeup thing. Joe Girardi swapped out Stephen Drew for Jose Pirela in the lineup, which should help — Gonzalez throws the split-change roughly three times as often to lefties than righties. Plus, you know, pretty good chance Pirela is a flat out better hitter than Drew at this point of his career. Here is the Orioles’ lineup and here is the Yankees’ lineup:
- CF Jacoby Ellsbury
- LF Brett Gardner
- DH Alex Rodriguez
- 1B Mark Teixeira
- C Brian McCann
- RF Carlos Beltran
- 3B Chase Headley
- 2B Jose Pirela
- SS Didi Gregorius
RHP Adam Warren
Another gorgeous day in New York and a perfect night for baseball. More weather like this, please. Tonight’s game will begin at 7:05pm ET and can be seen on YES locally and MLB Network nationally, depending on where you live. Enjoy the game, folks.
Injury Update: Masahiro Tanaka (wrist, forearm) played catch for the second straight day, this time making 60 throws at 90 feet after making 50 at 60 yesterday. Everything went well. Tanaka will take tomorrow off and throw again Sunday.
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